I could hear Andy Duverney snickering from hiding somewhere.Norton finally found a skinny guard on night duty to get into the hole behind the poster, and his name was Lori Trymen.He wasn't usually a smart man, and perhaps he thought he would be awarded the Bronze Star for it.As luck would have been Norton, he happened to find someone about the same size as Andy.Most of the prison guards are big guys, and if they send a big guy, they must have climbed halfway up and stuck there, and they haven't been able to get out until now.Cui Men tied the nylon rope around his waist when he entered, and held a large flashlight with six dry batteries in his hand.At this time, Gao Ya had already changed his mind and did not plan to resign, and he seemed to be the only person on the scene who was still sober-minded, and found a set of prison blueprints.From the cutaway, the walls of the prison look like a sandwich, the entire wall is a full ten feet thick, the inner wall and the outer wall are four feet thick, and the two-foot gap in the middle is a passage for laying pipes, like the minced meat of a sandwich.Cui Men's voice came from the hole, and it sounded hollow and dead."
Warden, it smells bad.""
Leave it alone, keep climbing."
Cui Men's legs disappeared into the hole, and for a while, he couldn't even see his feet, only the light of the flashlight shook faintly."
Warden, it tastes terrible.""
I said leave it alone."
Norton exclaimed.Cui Men's voice floated over mournfully."
Smells like poop, oh!
Oh, my God!
It's really poop, wow!
It's poop!
Oh my God, I'm about to throw up, wow......" and then Choi Men can be clearly heard spitting up everything he ate that day.Now it was my turn, I couldn't hold back any longer, and the whole day—oh, no, the last thirty years of repression finally broke out, and I began to laugh, laughing uncontrollably, and I hadn't laughed so much since I lost my freedom.I never expected to be able to smile so much when I was trapped in a gray wall, it was so enjoyable.--------------- "The Shawshank Redemption" Chapter 4 (4) --------------- "Get this man out!"
”Norton screamed, laughing so hard I didn't know if he was referring to me or Tremen.I just laughed out loud and couldn't stop even though Norton threatened to shoot me."
Get him out!"
All right!
Dear friends and relatives, it turned out that he was referring to me.They dragged me all the way to the confinement cell, where I spent fifteen days in solitary confinement, and I was not bored despite the long days, and I often remembered the sound of the poor ghost Chomen, who was not very smart, shouting "it's poop", and then I couldn't help but laugh again at the thought that Andy was driving straight south in his new car and suit.During those fifteen days, I was smiling, perhaps because my heart had flown to Andy.Andy Duverney had struggled to make his way through the dung pit, but he had climbed out of the sludge and out of the other end of the ocean to the blue Pacific Ocean.I heard about what happened later that day from six or seven people.I guess when Cui Men vomited out his lunch and dinner that day, he decided to keep climbing anyway.He didn't have to worry about falling through the passage between the inner and outer walls, because it was so narrow that it would take a lot of effort for Cuimen to push forward.He later said that he could barely hold his breath to get down, and that it was only then that he knew what it was like to be buried alive.At the end of the passage, he found a main drain, the sewer pipe leading to the fourteen toilets in the Fifth Ward, a porcelain pipe installed thirty-three years ago, which had been broken, and Tremen found Andy's stone hammer next to the jagged gap in the pipe.Andy is finally free, but this freedom is not easy to come by.The tube was narrower than the passage through which Cuimen crawled.Cuimen didn't go in, and as far as I know, no one else did, and I think the situation must have been so bad that it was almost indescribable.While Tsurimon was inspecting the notch in the pipe and the stone hammer, a rat jumped out of the tube, and Tremen later swore that the rat was as big as a beagle.Like a monkey climbing a pillar, he slowly crawled back to Andy's cell.Andy escaped from that pipe.Maybe he knew that the sewer pipe was a stream that led to a small stream five hundred yards away from the prison, because the blueprints for the prison could be found in many places, and Andy must have found a way to see them.He was a method-oriented freak, and he must have discovered that only the sewer in the fifth ward of the prison had not yet been connected to the new wastewater treatment plant, and he knew that if he did not escape at this time, he would have no chance in the future, because by August 1975 even the sewer pipe in our district would have to be connected to the new wastewater treatment plant.Five hundred yards, the length of five American football fields, stretching for nearly half a mile.He had climbed so far that perhaps with a small flashlight in his hand, or perhaps nothing but a few boxes of matches, I could hardly imagine and could not imagine how filthy the place he had crawled had been, and how squeaky fat rats were running around in front of him, and even rats would attack him because they were so bold in the dark.There was little room in the passage, and there might only be a very narrow gap for him to squeeze through, and at the pipe interface, he might have to push his body desperately to get by.If it had been me, the claustrophobic atmosphere would have driven me insane, but he managed to escape.They found mud footprints at the end of the sewer pipe, pointing all the way to the stream where the prison discharges sewage, and the search team found Andy's prison clothes two miles away, the next day.There was a lot of noise in the newspapers, but no one within a fifteen-mile radius reported to the police that the car had been stolen or that clothes had been lost, or that people had been seen running naked in the moonlight, or that they had heard the barking of dogs on the farm.Andy crawled out of the sewer pipe and disappeared like a wisp of smoke.But I dare say he must have disappeared in the direction of Bucksden.Three months after that memorable day, Warden Norton resigned.I'd be happy to report that he was like a defeated rooster and didn't have any strength to walk.He left Shawshank dejected, like an old prisoner who had the strength to go to the infirmary to ask for medicine.He was replaced by Goya, and it was probably the most brutal blow to Norton.When he returned to his hometown and went to church every Sunday, he must have often wondered how Andy had beaten him.I can tell him that the answer lies in "simplicity".Some people just have this ability, warden, and some people just don't have it, and they will never learn it.That's all I know; Now I'm going to tell you what I think.Maybe I'm not quite right in the details, but I'm willing to bet it's about the same thing.Because there are no two ways that a person like Andy would do.Whenever I think about it, I am reminded of what that crazy Indian Normandon said.After living with Andy for eight months, Normanden said, "He's a good guy.I'm glad to get out there.The air in that cell was terrible, and it was cold.He doesn't let anyone touch his stuff casually, and that's okay too.He's nice and never jokes, but the air is so bad. ”Poor Normandon, he knows more than anyone else, and knows it sooner.It took Andy eight months to get Normanden to be transferred to another cell and reincarnated in solitary confinement.If Normandon hadn't lived with him for eight months, I'm sure Andy would have fled long before Nixon resigned.I believe Andy started his project in 1949, not when he asked me to buy a stone hammer, but when he asked me to buy a poster of Rita Hayworth.I told you that he seemed to be in a hurry, and he looked like he was restless, and he was very excited.At that time, I thought he was embarrassed and didn't want others to know that he wanted women, especially dreamy and sexy goddesses, but now I realize that I was wrong, and there was another reason for his excitement.How did the hole found by the prison authorities behind the poster girl (the girl on the poster was not even born when the first poster girl, Rita Hayworth, took that picture)?
Of course, the main reason is Andy Duverney's perseverance and hard work, but there are two other factors that cannot be ignored: Lucky God's Favor and WPA Concrete WPA refers to the WorksProgress Administration established in the United States in the 1930s during Roosevelt's New Deal, when the federal government adopted a cash-for-work approach and provided 8 million jobs in the field of public works to the unemployed.--------------- Chapter 4 (5) of "The Shawshank Redemption", ---------------I guess there is no need to explain the favor of the god of luck at all.As for WPA concrete, I did a good job of checking the information.It took me a lot of time and a lot of postage.I wrote to the history department at the University of Maine, and they gave me somebody's address, and I wrote to the guy who had been involved in the WPA project and had been involved in the construction of the most heavily guarded area of Shawshank Prison, and he was also a foreman.The cells in the 3rd, 4th and 5th wards in this area were built between 1934 and 1937.Today, most people don't think of cement and concrete as a great "technological development," just as we don't think of cars or stoves as great technological advances today, but they aren't.Modern cement was not developed until around 1870, and concrete did not appear until the early 20th century.The process of mixing concrete is as delicate as making bread, with too much or not enough water to be put in it, and the sand and gravel may be too thick or too thin.In 1934, the science of concrete was far less advanced than it is today.From the outside, the walls of the Fifth Ward cells appear to be solid, but not dry enough, and in fact, the concrete walls are full of permeability.After a period of rainy days, the walls become damp and even ooze water.Cracks have appeared in some places, some as deep as an inch.They would periodically apply mortar to glue the cracks.Andy was later imprisoned in a Fifth District cell.He graduated from the University of Maine's business school and took two or three courses in geology, and in fact geology became one of his great hobbies, because it was very much in line with his extremely patient and meticulous nature.The 10,000-year Ice Age, the million-year orogeny, and the millennial bed rocks squeezed each other at the bottom of the strata."
Stress," Andy told me at one point, "all geology is about stress." ”Of course, there is also the factor of time.Andy has a lot of time to study the walls.When the door was closed and the lights were extinguished, there was nothing to see but the gray wall.Newcomers to prison initially struggle to adjust to the loss of their freedom, suffering from a kind of prisoner fever, and some even having to be dragged into the infirmary for sedation.It is not uncommon to hear new inmates banging on the iron fence and yelling to get out, and the shouting does not last long before the other inmates sing and harmonize: "Fresh fish is coming, fresh fish is coming, hey, little fresh fish, fresh fish is coming in today!"
”Andy didn't have this kind of runaway behavior when he first went to prison in 1948, but that doesn't mean he didn't feel the same way.He may have been on the verge of madness.In an instant, the familiar happy life was gone, and there was a long nightmare in front of me, like being in purgatory.So, what is he going to do?
I ask you.He must be trying to find something to do so that he doesn't have to think cranky.Oh, and there are still many ways to distract people, even in prison.The potential of human beings is endless, as I told you, there was a prisoner who carved three periods of Jesus, some who collected coins, some who collected stamps, and some who collected postcards of thirty-five countries.Andy is interested in stones, and along with the walls of his cell.I think his original idea was to engrave his name on the wall, or a few lines of poetry on the wall where the poster of the beautiful woman was later put on to encourage himself.Who knew that it was unexpectedly loosened that this concrete wall was unexpectedly loosened, and only a few words were engraved, and a large piece fell.I can imagine him lying on the bed, playing with a concrete block in his hand, looking at this piece of peeling concrete and pondering.Don't keep thinking that your life is ruined, and don't keep thinking about how you can be so unlucky.Forget all about that and take a good look at this concrete!
Chances are, in the months that followed, he thought it would be interesting to see how much he could dig through the wall.Of course, he can't dig into the wall so grandly, and you can't always say to him during the guard's regular weekly inspection (or during the raid inspection, where they always turn up something interesting, such as alcohol, drugs, pornographic images, weapons, etc.), and say, "This?
It's just a little hole in the wall, nothing to worry about. ”No, Andy couldn't do that, so he thought of asking me to buy a poster for Rita Hayworth, and he didn't want a small one, but a large one.And, of course, his stone hammer.I remember when I got the little hammer for him in 1948, I thought that if I wanted to use this hammer to dig through the walls of the prison, it would take about 600 years.Yes, but Andy only had to dig through half of the wall – but even though the concrete wall was very soft, he still managed to succeed with two hammers for twenty-seven years.Of course, I wasted a lot of time living with Normanden.He could only work at night, and it was after everyone had fallen asleep in the middle of the night, including the guards on the night shift.However, the biggest challenge in slowing down the speed is how to deal with the knocked down concrete blocks.He could wrap the hammer head in a grinding stone cloth to silence the sound, but what to do with the shards that were knocked out?
I think he must have made the concrete blocks into tiny pieces and shipped them out in his sleeve.I remember watching him walk across the playing field on Sunday after I helped him get the stone hammer, his nose and eyes swollen from the conflict with his sister.He bent down and picked up the pebble......
Then the pebble disappeared into his cuff.Concealed pockets with cuffs or trouser cuffs are an old trick in prison.There is another thing that sticks in my mind, and I may have seen it more than once, is Andy walking through the playground in the suffocating air on a hot summer afternoon, yes, the air is very suffocating, except for the occasional breeze that blows through and kicks up the dust flying under Andy's feet.So, maybe there are still a lot of tricks hidden in his trouser legs.You fill the pockets with small pieces to throw away, then walk around with your hands in your trouser pockets, and when you feel safe, jerk on the pockets while people aren't looking.Of course, there must be a very tough thread in the trouser pocket that connects to the hidden pocket of the trouser cuff.As you walk, the sand in your pocket pours between your feet, a trick used by World War II prisoners of war when they dug tunnels to escape.--------------- chapter 4 (6) of "The Shawshank Redemption"--------------- year after year, Andy just carried bags of concrete fragments to the playground and dumped them.After one term of warden, after another, he served the warden, and they all thought that he was doing it to expand the library, and I had no doubt about it, but what he really wanted to fight for was the special treatment of living alone.I suspect he really had any specific escape plans or hopes in the first place, perhaps thinking that the ten-foot-thick wall was solidly filled with concrete, or that even if he managed to dig through the wall, he would have to escape to the playing field thirty feet away.But, like I said, I don't think Andy was worried about that, because he must have thought: I only get a foot forward every seven years, so it might take seventy years to dig through this wall, and I'll be one hundred and one years old by then.If I were Andy, my second assumption would be that I would eventually be caught, locked up for a long time, and have a big cross drawn on the record.After all, they come every week for routine inspections, and there are surprise inspections – usually at night.He must have felt that he couldn't have dug for too long, and sooner or later the guards would check the back of Rita Hayworth's poster for sharpened spoon handles or tape marijuana cigarettes to the wall.And his reaction to the second hypothesis must be: him!
Maybe he even thought of it as a game.How deep can I dig before they find out?
Prison was a very dreary place, and in the early years, the possibility of being raided in the middle of the night before the poster was put up may have added a little spice to his life.And I do think he couldn't have escaped by luck alone, at least not for twenty-seven years in a row.Nevertheless, I have to say that he was lucky not to be caught two years before he started helping Harry with inheritance tax matters in mid-May 1950.It is also possible that in addition to good luck, he has other magic weapons.Anyway, money can make ghosts grind, maybe he secretly stuffs a few bills to the guards every week so that they don't trouble him.If the price is good, most of the guards will cooperate.As long as the purse is paid, it is not too much to let the prisoner have a poster of a beautiful woman or a pack of cigarettes, not to mention that Andy is a model prisoner, he is very quiet, he speaks in an orderly manner, he is courteous and polite, and he will not fist each other at every turn.Usually the prisoners who can't escape the prison's semi-annual inspection are the ones who are crazy or impulsive, and the guards will search the entire cell thoroughly, lift the mattresses, remove the pillows, and poke the toilet drain carefully.By 1950, Andy was not only an exemplary prisoner, but also a valuable asset, and he was able to help them with tax refunds, teach them free instructions on how to plan real estate investments, take advantage of tax exemptions, and apply for loans, better than a professional accountant.I still remember him sitting in the library, patiently checking the terms of the car loan agreement with the captain of the guard, analyzing the pros and cons of the agreement for him, teaching him how to find the best loan solution, and guiding him to avoid the blood-sucking financial companies that lend out loan sharks almost under legal cover.When Andy finished explaining, the captain of the guard reached out to shake his hand......
Then it quickly retracted again.He forgot for a moment that he wasn't dealing with normal people.Andy has always been mindful of stock market dynamics and changes in tax laws, so even though he has been in prison for a while, it has not detracted from his usefulness in the slightest.He began to get funding for the library, the war between him and the sisters had ceased, the guards were no longer so careful about inspecting his cell, and he was a model prisoner.Then one day, probably around October 1967, Andy's long-term hobby suddenly became different.One night, he lifted the poster and plunged his entire upper body into the hole, and Lacole Wisge's poster was up to his hips, and the tip of the stone hammer must have suddenly sunk into the concrete.He was about to take away a few pieces of knocked concrete, but at that moment he might have heard something falling, bouncing back and forth between the erected pipes, clanging.Did he already know in advance that he would dig that passage?
Or was it a big surprise at the time?
Then it is unknown.He may have seen the blueprint of the prison, but he may not have seen it.If not, I'm sure he must have managed to find the blueprints later.He must have suddenly understood that he wasn't just playing a game, he was gambling in doing so, and he was betting big, his life and his future.Even if he wasn't so sure at the time, he was pretty sure, because the first time he talked to me about Ziva Taniho was around that time.Digging holes in the walls was meant to be fun, but suddenly, the stupid hole would dictate his fate if he knew that the bottom of the tunnel was a sewer pipe and that it would lead all the way outside the prison walls.Now, in addition to worrying about the key that weighed under the Bucksden rock, he also had to worry that some new guard trying to perform would lift the poster and discover the great project, or suddenly move into a new roommate, or be suddenly transferred to another prison after all these years here.With so much on his mind for the next eight years, all I can say is that he was one of the calmest people I've ever met.If it had been me, I would have gone crazy with all the uncertainty of everything, but Andy continued to gamble.Ironically, there's another thing that makes me shudder when I think about it, which is what if Andy gets parole?
Can you imagine?
Prisoners who have been released on parole are sent to another location three days before they are released from prison to undergo a full medical examination and skills test.During these three days, his cell will be thoroughly cleaned, so that his parole will not only be in vain, but will also result in a long period of solitary confinement in solitary confinement, plus a longer sentence......
But he was transferred to a different cell to serve his sentence.If he had already dug the passage in 1967, why didn't he escape from prison until 1975?
I'm not sure - but I can guess.--------------- Chapter 4 (7) of The Shawshank Redemption--------------- first of all, he will become more careful than before.He's too smart to blindly speed up and want to get out in eight or even eighteen months.He must have dug the passage a little wider at a time.When he drank on Chinese New Year's Eve that year, the entrance of the cave might be the size of a tea cup, and by the time he celebrated his birthday in 1968, the mouth of the cave might be the size of a saucer.By the time the 1969 baseball season began, the hole had probably been dug as big as a pallet.For a while, I guessed that after he had dug the passage, he would have dug much faster, because he had to let the knocked-down concrete fall straight through the passage, and not have to break it up like I had done before, and then transport it out of the cell and throw it away, as I said earlier.But since it took him so long, I'm sure he wouldn't dare do it.He may have thought that the sound of falling concrete would arouse the suspicion of others.Or if he had known, as I suspected, that there was a sewer pipe underneath, he would probably have feared that the falling concrete block would have broken the sewer before he was ready, messing up the prison's drainage system and leading to an investigation.Needless to say, in this case, a catastrophe is coming.But I suspect that Andy will be able to barely squeeze into that hole before Nixon is sworn in for a second term......
Or maybe it could have been done earlier, Andy was very skinny.Why didn't he leave then?
Ladies and gentlemen, at this point, my rational reasoning is useless, and I can only guess.One possibility is that the crawling area is stuffed with garbage, and he has to clean it before he can get out.But that doesn't take that long, either.So what exactly is the reason?
I think maybe Andy is starting to feel scared.I have tried to describe what it is like to gradually become constrained by the prison system.At first, you can't stand the feeling of being trapped by four walls, and then gradually you can tolerate this life and accept it......
Then, when your body and mind gradually adjust, you even start to enjoy this life.When you can eat, when you can write letters, when you can smoke, it's all well defined.If you work in a laundry room or license plate factory, you can have five minutes to go to the toilet every hour, and everyone takes turns to go to the toilet at a scheduled time.For thirty-five years, I went to the toilet every time the minute hand went to twenty-five, and after thirty-five years, I only wanted to go to the toilet at that time: twenty-five minutes after the hour hour.If for some reason I couldn't go to the toilet at that time, after five minutes, my urge to urinate or defecate would be gone, and I wouldn't want to go to the toilet until the next hour when the minute hand of the clock pointed to twenty-five minutes again.I think Andy is also trying to overcome this institutionalized syndrome — and at the same time, he has a deep fear that after years of hard work, everything will come to naught.